1. Field
Embodiments relate to a face recognition apparatus and method for identity verification.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information security and identity verification is becoming increasingly important with continued advances in information technology.
Conventionally, a key, a password, an ID card, a smart card, or the like have been used for information security and identity verification. However, these are not easily portable and may be lost and may also be forged, falsified, and illegally used by others. Information security and identity verification technologies through biometrics have been developed to overcome these problems.
Biometrics recognizes a part of the bodies of an individual to verify their identity. Examples of biometrics include fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, voice recognition, signature recognition, and face recognition. Biometrics has been intensively researched since it provides great convenience and security due to use of body parts specific to each individual.
Among such biometric technologies, face recognition is regarded as a convenient and competitive biometric technology since the user's identity can be verified in a contactless manner without the need for user action, unlike other technologies such as fingerprint recognition and iris recognition which require a specific gesture or action from the user.
Face recognition technologies are being intensively developed and researched in various application fields such as summarizing of moving images using face information, which is one of the core multimedia database search technologies, identity verification, Human Computer Interface (HCI) image search, security, and monitoring system.
However, face recognition results are sensitive to changes in internal environments such as identity, age, race, face expression, and accessories and changes in external environments such as pose, external illumination, and image processing.
That is, recognition performance may vary depending on environmental changes if one specific feature analysis method is used for face recognition. Thus, there may be a need to provide a face recognition technology robust to environmental changes.